Wiley Accounting
Weekly Updates

Discussion Topics for Today's Classroom

The other side of the story

Description: Last week this space featured a discussion of a request by Statistics Canada to obtain banking information of Canadians without having approached those Canadians first. Of course, the opposition parties in Parliament were quick to criticize this apparent breach of protocol, though Statistics Canada had made efforts to brief the press beforehand. This week National Post columnist Andrew Coyne offered another view of the story, noting how political parties in Canada have plenty of personal information about us in their files. To make matters worse, the federal political parties have written the laws on privacy such that they do not apply to them.